Christopher Schroeder

Category: community and culture

  • Another One

    Another One

    I expected more fundraising chatter when I turned on WBEZ this morning and was surprised by the regularly scheduled programming.

    I heard four promos and ads before any news yesterday morning. I heard several more spots and a traffic report along with some headlines before the latest financial appeals resumed.

    WBEZ reportedly wants to raise one million dollars by the end of the month. Its previous fundraiser, which ended about three weeks ago, seems to have left it substantially short of this goal, so it initiated a follow-up this week, and is reportedly still some $300,000 short of its finish line.

    The previous one, which lasted for over a week, offered monthly donors a generic stream that allowed them in exchange for any local coverage to avoid these appeals, which is better I guess than enduring this incessant and irrelevant chatter. This second fundraiser for whatever reason did not include such a stream for those who already donate every month.

    As a result I heard hosts offer some strange appeals. One explained that the donations from last year didn’t fill the financial holes in the budget for this year. Another suggested that a monthly donation was like the difference between a lump-sum payment and a monthly deposited check.

    WBEZ didn’t learn any lessons in other words and cannot balance a budget. It continues to blame its financial challenges on the federal funding cuts from more than a year ago as if these cuts hadn’t been championed by conservatives for years, and if responsible executives hadn’t had enough time to formulate backup plans.

    WBEZ didn’t learn any lessons in other words and cannot balance a budget. It continues to blame its financial challenges on the federal funding cuts from more than a year ago as if these cuts hadn’t been championed by conservatives for years, and if responsible executives hadn’t had enough time to formulate backup plans.

    None of these concerns and others has been assuaged by the latest Chicago Public Media initiative, which is a public social network called < chicago.com >. This network according to CPM will be a collaboratively-constructed public space for community conversations and local information as well as other content.

    Unclear at least at the moment is whether this network will identify curated content and if the rest will be assessed for accuracy, which are two crucial public media functions. How will users know whether the information in this network is as reliable as what they hear on the radio? How will they know whether these guides are as reliable as the ones that appear in the newspaper?

    This issue has already arisen in response to an AI-generated SUN-TIMES summer reading guide last year. It will only become more urgent in this new initiative unless users expect something other than curated and credible content in this space, which in my opinion would challenge a fundamental public media function.

    No one whom I read seems to know the future of journalism in this increasingly digitized world. Regardless, the stakes given the way AI has been seeping throughout societies might never have been higher.

    Countries still need public media to democratically survive. Communities still need sustainable public media to thrive.

    Here’s hoping that Chicago Public Media knows what it is doing, and is responsibly using what we donate.

  • More Misty Than Clear

    More Misty Than Clear

    I still wanted to see Misty Green, which is the recent movie written and directed by Chris Rock, in spite of its mixed reviews.

    This movie tells the story of this aging and difficult actor (Rosalind Eleazar) who is given one week to leave her late lover’s apartment, discovers that her schizophrenic brother Jay (Daniel Kaluuya) has been released from rehab, and encounters a casting director named Jordan (Rock) who offers her second chances. This challenging confluence presumably is why Misty sabotages another acting opportunity and reluctantly accepts a prostitution offer from sometime lover, and fellow addict, Zach (Adam Driver), but doesn’t prevent her from attempting to make amends and reconstruct her life.

    I wanted to like this movie, which could have offered insights into aging, especially in a society that prioritizes its opposite. However, it seemed distracted by achieving a prestige status or something, which left it a slick story that never quite moved me.

    Eleazar’s performance is sufficiently solid, and could have offered a way into this story. Moreover, several of supporting performances as foils clarify Eleazar’s character Misty.

    Misty’s friend Naomi (Anna Kendrick) is content to settle for something less than honesty in exchange for stability, and her inheritance. Misty’s brother Jay models second chances but never can make amends, or make good on these second change promises.

    Part of the problem is that Misty’s change is never dramatized, which also poses a problem for the forgiveness theme that seems designated as the core of this story.

    Jordan tells Misty midway into the movie a story from his uncle about forgiveness — people discover how much they’re loved when their lovers find them sleeping with others — and Misty returns to this story when she stops by something Jordan is shooting at the end of this movie.

    Misty is high and driving when she is initially told this story, and has betrayed Jordan, and literally prostituted herself, when she returns to it at the end. The obvious question in the background has been whether she deserves forgiveness, but the significance is that she has learned to believe no matter whether Jordan calls or not that she does.

    This discovery, and growth, however are never dramatized or demonstrated, and need to be substantiated in a more developed script. As a result, this movie, which is mostly a success for Rock as its director, is somewhat less so for him as its author.

  • If We Can Keep It

    If We Can Keep It

    I didn’t expect to be politically re-energized again.

    I was, and still am, confused and curious about the next No Kings initiative of “hyper-local actions” alongside larger gatherings. I can understand the Indivisible mid-term optimism as a result of current polling data, Trump’s alienating actions, and its hope strategy but cannot ignore that I’ve been here before.

    I naively hoped that the first rally (April 2025) would capture politicians’ attention and compel substantial responses. I was more and more discouraged after subsequent rallies (June and October 2025 and March 2026).

    I objected to the way that Indivisible deployed a similar exclusionary strategy as others who critiqued mainstream Democratic leadership. I agree with the need for this specific critique, and support such critiques generally, but I wish liberals would lose their purity tests, and their political hypocrisies, and instead emphasize cross-community coalition-building.

    Then I read Jill Lepore’s most recent book about the Constitution. This book, which won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for history, offers an account of this foundational document that focuses on the part played by people in the pursuit of a more perfect union.

    The Constitution according to Lepore was designed as both a resistance and means to change. Central was the assumption that this document would not be preserved in its original form at all costs but that it would consistently and constantly updated and changed through amendments and other ways by the American people.

    Such a perspective, which she painstakingly establishes, is also clear in her critique of originalism. This interpretive strategy, which is predicated upon the search for the original intention or meaning, reinforces the impression of an artifact or relic to be preserved rather than a principled process for adaptation and change.

    This book, which some consider Lepore’s best, isn’t my favorite one of hers. Nonetheless, it convinced me that the American political system is a participatory sport, and not something seen from the sidelines.

    And it restored my motivation to reconnect with No Kings, Indivisible, and other political organizations that are calling out and challenging the corruption of this current administration, its Congressional enablers, and my fellow Americans who voted for them.

    Benjamin Franklin’s qualified answer to that Constitutional Convention question seems as relevant today as ever.